A look back at what you may have missed at LA Fashion Week

By Robin Rowe

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 11/10/2011 – Fashion Minga celebrated fashion, music and dance with a collaboration of designers and performers at LA Fashion Week on Friday, October 21st. The Spring 2012 Fashion Minga showcased six designers, sever performances, and welcomed over 2,000 buyers, media and celebrities to host venue Boulevard3.

The Fashion Minga red-carpet included Dancing With The Stars celebrities Brooke Burke, Maksim and Val Chmerkovskiy and Kyle Massey. Also on the red carpet were Diana DeGarmo of American Idol, Harvey Walden of Celebrity Fit Club and Andrea Gabriel of The Twilight Saga 1 & 2.

OmniPeace, a humanitarian fashion brand that

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Morganite Diamond and Rose Gold Meira T Charm Necklace

Meira T Jewelry Line Great for an award show or everyday glamour

By Gabrielle Pantera

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 9/16/2011 – Award season is starting and it’s time to get glammed up.

Meira T Jewelry is a jewelry line that is classic yet fresh and hip too. In 1990 Meira began designing for IDI then she moved on to devolve her own Meira has developed a line that is sold in major jewelry stores throughout the world.

Meira T gets her inspiration from her European and Middle Eastern background. These inspirations are clear in all her designs. The Meira T collection has a unique flair that speaks a combination of creativity and fashion creativity. (more…)

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Emerald Splash II - Bold Bangle

Mango Bangles -Mix and match to go with your personal style or mood.

By Gabrielle Pantera

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 9/7/2011 – “It all started when we met in India in the summer of 2004 while David was studying gemology,” says co designer and founder of Mango tree bangles Helen Dukat. “Ever since David was a child, he was fascinated by the beauty of nature’s treasures.”

“Helen, with her passion for creations and skillful hands was the Ying that completed my Yang,” says Co designer and founder David Aviv. “Designing custom jewelry came very natural.”

Mango Tree Bangles are made from Organic grade Mango trees that don’t yield fruit anymore. (more…)

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Celebrating Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer’s fiction and nonfiction novels on Sale August 15-August 21, 2011 to celebrate her birthday.

By Gabrielle Pantera

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 8/18/2011- Georgette Heyer would have been 109th birthday on Tuesday, August 16. Heyer is considered the Queen of Regency romance.

Sourcebook  is honoring this most beloved author by discounting all 46 Heyer eBooks in their current catalog to $1.99 for one week starting August 15^th through August 21^st.

Also available is Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester. This  is a reader companion book also for $1.99 from August 15-August 21.

Celebrate Heyer writing and fall in love with Regency romance, mysteries, historical and historical non fiction books as e-books.

Remember the promotion start Monday August 15^th, 2011.

I’ve included the full list of Heyer titles available separated by category: (more…)

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Silk is for Seduction

Exclusive interview with author Loretta Chase and a review of her novel about a Regency dressmaker resisting a scandalous romance **** 4 Stars

By Gabrielle Pantera

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 08/04/2011 – “I was already obsessed with early 19th century women’s fashion magazines, which had recently become available on Google Books,” says author Loretta Chase. “A visit to Colonial Wiliamsburg put me in touch with their historically accurate dressmakers and tailors and their highly contagious enthusiasm. I must have mentioned the subject to my agent on many occasions, because as I was finishing Last Night’s Scandal and we were talking about what to do next, she said, ‘What about a series about dressmakers?’ My ‘Yes!’ was probably deafening.”

Silk is for Seduction is the story of Marcelline Noirot, a London dressmaker determined to be the most sought after dressmaker to the ton. The Duke of Clevedon is getting married. If Noirot can get the duke as a customer for the future duchess’ gowns, her business will be a success for her and her sisters. Unfortunately, there’s a growing physical attraction between the two. Can she close the deal with the duke without seduction becoming a part of the game? Will it all end in scandal?

Chase is always a stellar read. There are passionate and sexy scenes. The humor in her books will make you laugh out loud. The beginning of Silk is for Seduction builds slowly into a strong connection in the relationship between Marcelline and Clevedon. You’ll want to read all the books in the series.

Part of Chase’s research came from unexpected sources. “Early on I watched the movie Valentino, which turned out to be far more useful than I’d expected,” says Chase. “The way his team made clothes is the same way my heroines make them…  every stitch by hand, cutting done by trained eye…on some of the world’s most expensive fabrics. Though I’d created my heroine Marcelline before I saw the movie, I can see how Valentino influenced the way her character developed, the artistic vision, the close attention to detail, the one-track mind, and the big artistic ego.”

Another surprise was meeting a dressmaker guest at a friend’s dinner party in Washington D.C. “Her history had certain parallels to my heroine’s, and I think that meeting her helped me deepen and enrich the character of my heroine…the modern version of the 19th century dressmakers I was writing about. She lives in Maine, and makes clothes for her clients the way my dressmakers do, draping and cutting the fabric.” A thunderstorm that night created an extensive blackout and completed the 19th century atmosphere.  The party happened entirely by candlelight, without air conditioning in 90° heat.

Chase says she studied early 19th century gossip and fashion magazines and consulted with the dressmakers of Colonial Williamsburg, whose knowledge extends well beyond the site’s historical era. “Since Silk is for Seduction is set later in the century than my previous books, and since there’s travel between Paris and London, I spent a lot of time with 1830s travel accounts and guides, too. I added many tomes to my collection of books on historical dress. These days, much of this material is online at Google Books, Project Gutenberg, Internet Archives, and other sites.” Chase says it wasn’t necessary to travel to university or big-city libraries to find the primary source materials she wanted.

Chase’s editor at Avon Books is May Chen. “May inherited me when my previous editor had to reduce her workload,” says Chase. “May works fast, so I get almost immediate feedback, which is a blessing…and not all that common in publishing.  But working fast, she still digs deep. Her style is collaborative. If something bothers her, she’ll ask first what I was trying to do, because she wants to work with my vision.The big challenge is working with myself. Things go so very slowly in the beginning of a book. There’s a crazed, high stress interval as the deadline approaches.”

Chase’s agent is Nancy Yost of the Nancy Yost Literary Agency. “I’d met Nancy years ago when she was an editor at Avon,” says Chase. “When, after a hiatus, I returned to writing historical romance and was looking for a new agent, an editor put us in touch, and things clicked. She has great ideas, tremendous enthusiasm, and an incredible work ethic.”

At this time Silk is for Seduction is not being adapted for film or TV. “It has screen potential,” says Chase, “the dog-eat-dog world of high fashion, the extravagant clothes, the high intensity relationship between hero and heroine plus lots of banter, a couple of the kind of big action events that John Gregory Dunne would have called ‘whammies’, and two good-looking aristocrats punching each other in front of St. James’s Palace.”

Four of Chase’s books have been finalists for a Romance Writers of America Rita award, and two have won. In the Top 100 Romances Poll, All About Romance readers have voted one of her books, Lord of Scoundrels, the #1 romance four times and other Chase books have made this list.  She’s received awards from RT Book Reviews and elsewhere.

Two Nerdy History Girls is a blog where Chase and historical novelist Susan Holloway Scott entertain readers with interesting historical facts they find in the course of their research. “Rather than politics and wars, we focus on people and their everyday lives: what they wore, what they read, how they lived, who they loved, who they hated, what they laughed at,” says Chase. “The blog offers readers a daily dose of time travel as well as insight into our stories.”

Chase is currently working on the second book of the Dressmakers series. Scandal Wears Satin, whose heroine is the second sister of the trio of sisters. Chase lives in New England. She was born in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Chases website is: www.LorettaChase.com

Silk Is For Seduction by Loretta Chase
Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages, Publisher: Avon; Original edition (June 28, 2011), Language: English, ISBN: 9780061632686

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Anthem for a Doomed Youth

Exclusive interview with author Carola Dunn and a review of her new book Anthem for a Doomed Youth the 19^th novel in the Daisy Dalrymple mysteries *** 3 Stars

By Gabrielle Pantera

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 5/26/2011 – “I was listening to Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem on the radio and Wilfred Owen’s poem Anthem for Doomed Youth, as always, brought tears to my eyes,” says author Carola Dunn. “It struck me that his title would make a good title for a mystery. Obviously, as my Daisy Dalrymple series is set in the 1920s, the mystery had to be connected with events that took place during the first World War.”

Wilfred Owen was killed in action a week before the Armistice. (more…)

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